Studying at Univ!

Hello!

I am so happy to say that I have officially spent a week studying in Oxford at University College ("Univ" to the students), The entire experience was absolutely wonderful and I had so much fun traveling to a different city with my whole ASE programme! To chronicle some of the highlights of my week, I am just going to give a short story in the caption of each picture, so without further ado... my week in Oxford!

Everyone was super excited to arrive in Oxford after a two hour bus ride. I stayed in the New Buildings section for housing and let me say that Gettysburg has nothing on these Univ students' housing options. My roommate, Heather, and I stayed in a suite that had 2 single bedrooms, a private bathroom, a kitchenette, and a very spacious living room that contained ceiling to floor bookshelves on 3 of the walls, 2 massive desks, and a couch.

The huge Harry Potter-esque dining hall in Univ was incredible for catching up with people that I don't normally get a chance to talk to in Bath during the week. The food was amazing, especially breakfast...I feel no shame in saying I had a chocolate croissant every day with my yogurt, eggs, and hash browns and it was all delicious! 

Punting for the first time was quite an experience to say the least. Punting, essentially, is done standing up on the back of a flat-bottomed boat and pushing yourself along with a 8 foot pole that also acts as a rudder if you actually do it right...needless to say, we floundered. A supposed 45 minute excursion ended up taking us over 2 hours and our ASE supervisors eventually had to send a rescue boat to come get us because they were getting worried that we had all ended up in the canal! My one and only time punting was done in the hail (yes, England likes to sporadically hail at the most ill-opportune times) and I managed to turn us in circles for about 10 minutes. I think I can cross off 'professional punter' from my list of possible future employment... 

My roommate, Melanie, and I decided to take up the challenge issued to all the ASE students that required you to get photographic evidence of your visiting all 40 University of Oxford colleges. The whole excursion took us around 4 hours to complete and we walked 9.4 miles to get to all 40 of them! I decided to put up the picture of Mansfield College for my Mom, who grew up in Mansfield, PA. :)

Our very last picture of the Oxford Colleges scavenger hunt at the front door of Univ!

The gardens of Christ Church Cathedral and Christ Church College were absolutely spectacular. We were able to weasel our way into some private spaces on the grounds since our tour guide (one of the ASE tutors) actually went to Christ Church College when he was a student.  

Can you imagine this view as your college campus? Gettysburg is certainly pretty, but everything in England just has such exuberant history behind all the architecture.

Inside Christ Church College's dining hall, which inspired the Great Hall in the Harry Potter movies!

And the actual staircase leading up to the Great Hall that the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone film cast are seen on just before Harry and his friends are sorted into their houses. The steps were then recreated as one of the sets for the later movies. 

Christ Church Cathedral had beautiful stained glass windows and high vaulted ceilings. The best part about the Cathedral by far was attending one of the church services and hearing the Christ Church choir (a world famous all-boys choir) sing. The voices just echoed throughout the entire building creating this ethereal sound when accompanied by their church organ.

The Trinity College Library, aka the most photographed building in Oxford.  (No, not the same Trinity College that I saw in Dublin. This is one of the 40 Oxford colleges that just happens to be named Trinity.)

My friend, Tory, and I at the final dinner celebration with all of us in our finery. 

Everyone, including all the tutors and ASE admin, headed to the Univ bar after our fancy dinner to loosen up a bit and hang out and I finally got that picture with my Education advisor, Andrew Butterworth, who is like everyone's pseudo-grandpa! The funniest part of the night though, had to be getting booty-bumped out of the way by the director of the programme, Jonathan Hope, while he was playing a very competitive game of pool :) 

On our way home to Bath, we stopped off at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill.  The palace has been handed down 11 generations to the current owners, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, was built in the early 18th century, and is officially a world heritage site.

The Long Library inside Blenheim. Oh, the libraries here are something I dream about...

My favorite pieces of art inside the palace were the huge tapestries that adorned the walls in several of the rooms, depicting the first Duke's victory at the Battle of Blindheim in 1704.

Another Harry Potter site!! One of the scenes in the later movies when they have a flashback to Professor Snape's past was filmed at Blenheim in front of this very tree!

One of my favorite views of the grounds with the palace in the background. 

Some of my adventures that didn't get photographed were eating out with 46 of my ASE peers at one of the best Indian restaurants in Oxford (we pretty much took over the whole restaurant) and going shopping at Blackwell's bookstore and the original Alice in Wonderland shop that inspired scenes in Lewis Carroll's novel. I can even check "clubbing in England" off the bucket list!

This weekend marks the start of spring break and Mackenzie's arrival in Europe!!!!!! The goal is to blog from Italy and France every couple days since I would never be able to remember all the things we are going to see if I waited until the week was over to blog about everything at once. So expect tons of pictures to come and I'll talk to you again from Italy!!

Cheers!